AFP, MANDALAY, Myanmar
Rescuers yesterday pulled a man alive from the rubble five days after Myanmar’s devastating earthquake, as calls grew for the junta to allow more aid in and halt attacks on rebels.
The shallow magnitude 7.7 earthquake on Friday last week flattened buildings across Myanmar, killing more than 2,700 people and making thousands more homeless.
Several leading armed groups fighting the military have suspended hostilities during the quake recovery, but Burmese State Administration Council Chairman Min Aung Hlaing vowed to continue “defensive activities” against “terrorists.”
A Buddhist monk looks on next to rubble at the damaged Shwe Yay Saung Taik Monastery in Mandalay, Myanmar, on Tuesday, four days after a major earthquake struck central Myanmar.
Photo: AFP
UN agencies, rights groups and foreign governments have urged all sides in Myanmar’s civil war to stop fighting and focus on helping those affected by the quake, the biggest to hit the country in decades.
Hopes of finding more survivors are fading, but there was a moment of joy yesterday as a man was pulled alive from the ruins of a hotel in the capital, Naypyidaw.
The 26-year-old hotel worker was extracted by a joint Burmese-Turkish team shortly after midnight, the fire service and junta said.
Dazed and dusty, but conscious, the man was pulled through a hole in the rubble and put on a stretcher, video posted on Facebook by the Burmese Fire Services Department shows.
Min Aung Hlaing on Tuesday said that the death toll had risen to 2,719, with more than 4,500 injured and 441 still missing.
However, with patchy communications and infrastructure delaying efforts to gather information and deliver aid, the true scale of the disaster has yet to become clear, and the toll is likely to rise.
Relief groups say that that response has been hindered by continued fighting between the junta and the complex patchwork of armed groups opposed to its rule, which began in a 2021 coup.
UN special envoy on Myanmar Julie Bishop called on all sides to “focus their efforts on the protection of civilians, including aid workers, and the delivery of life-saving assistance.”
Even before Friday’s earthquake, 3.5 million people were displaced by the fighting, many of them at risk of hunger, the UN said.
Late on Tuesday, an alliance of three of Myanmar’s most powerful ethnic minority armed groups announced a one-month pause in hostilities to support humanitarian efforts in response to the quake.
The announcement by the Three Brotherhood Alliance followed a separate partial ceasefire called by the People’s Defence Force — civilian groups that took up arms after the coup to fight junta rule.
However, there have been multiple reports of junta airstrikes against rebel groups since the quake.
“We are aware that some ethnic armed groups are currently not engaged in combat, but are organizing and training to carry out attacks,” Min Aung Hlaing said, mentioning sabotage against the electricity supply.
“Since such activities constitute attacks, the Tatmadaw [armed forces] will continue to carry out necessary defensive activities,” he said.
